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Sweden’s government is planning to develop a new national strategy to counter the growing prejudice against Islam in the country, according to Alice Bah Kuhnke, Swedish minister of culture and democracy.

Kuhnke said at a Stockholm protest rally against the spate of attacks on mosques that the government will coordinate with local Muslim communities to find ways to fight Islamophobia by spreading awareness about Islam among people, BBC News reported. The term “Islamophobia” is used to refer to the hatred toward, and fear of, the religion of Islam.

“The big problem is that some people have these sets of values which make them prepared to carry out these horrendous deeds. We won’t change that with more window bars, cameras or guards,” Ria Novosti quoted Kuhnke as saying, adding that the minister would start consultations with local Muslim organizations in February.

On Friday, thousands of people took to the streets in three of Sweden’s largest cities, including Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo, to demand an end to the attacks on mosques. At a protest rally, outside the parliament in Stockholm, demonstrators held leaflets saying, “Don’t touch my mosque,” to show their solidarity with the Muslim community in the country.

“I came here because I am against the mosque attacks. They are not only attacks on mosques but also against Swedish democracy,” one of the protesters told The Local, a Swedish media outlet. “I am a Swedish citizen first and I am also a Swedish Muslim seeking to protect my rights and to show solidarity with others to deal with this Islamophobia.”

A mosque in Sweden’s fourth largest city, Uppsala, was attacked on Thursday in what was reportedly the third arson attack on a Muslim center in the country within a week. The attack followed another incident on Monday, when a fire broke out at a mosque in the southern town of Eslov. An earlier Christmas Day attack on another mosque in Eskilstuna city, 86 miles west of the Swedish capital Stockholm, had wounded five people.

In the face of massive anti-Islam protests organized by Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West (PEGIDA), Germany will witness a major counter-demonstration on Jan. 5 to protest widespread hatred toward Muslims in German society, which has a long history of fear of foreigners, dating back to the Nazi regime’s extermination of the Jewish community. Since then, neo-Nazi movements have led ongoing discriminatory practices and violent attacks against immigrants.

At least 13 nongovernmental organizations of Muslim and ethnic Turkish immigrants in Germany released a joint declarations stating that they would give significant support to the upcoming demonstration against PEGIDA, while calling for other organizations to join the counter-protest in Cologne. “We are calling on all citizens to join the demonstration in Cologne on Jan. 5 and take a stance against racism, xenophobia, hatred against foreigners and hostility against Islam,” the organizations said in a joint statement, as reported by Anadolu Agency. “We will support all democratic initiatives and allies that oppose PEGIDA and other groups inspired by it,” the statement added.

Twitter and Facebook are refusing to take down hundreds of inflammatory Islamophobic postings from across their sites despite being alerted to the content by anti-racism groups, an investigation by The Independent has established.

The number of postings, some of which accuse Muslims of being rapists, paedophiles and comparable to cancer, has increased significantly in recent months in the aftermath of the Rotherham sex-abuse scandal and the murder of British hostages held by Isis.

The most extreme call for the execution of British Muslims – but in most cases those behind the abuse have not had their accounts suspended or the posts removed.

Facebook said it had to “strike the right balance” between freedom of expression and maintaining “a safe and trusted environment” but would remove any content reported to it that “directly attacks others based on their race”. Twitter said it reviews all content that is reported for breaking its rules which prohibit specific threats of violence.

Over the past four months Muslim groups have been attempting to compile details of online abuse and report it to Twitter and Facebook. They have brought dozens of accounts and hundreds of messages to the attention of the social-media companies.

But despite this most of the accounts reported are still easily accessible. On New Year’s Eve the author of one of the accounts reported wrote: “If whites had groomed only paki girls 1 It would be a race hate crime. 2 There would be riots from all Muslim dogs.”

Other examples of extremist postings on Twitter include:

*A user posted an image of a girl with a noose around her neck with the caption: “6 per cent of white British girls will become sex slaves to the Islamic slave trade in Britain”.

*A tweet which reads: “Should have lost World War Two. Your daughters would be getting impregnated by handsome blond Germans instead of Pakistani goat herders. Good job Britain.”

*On Facebook a posting in response to the beheading of Westerners in Syria is also still easily accessible despite being reported to the company weeks ago. It reads: “For every person beheaded by these sick savages we should drag 10 off the streets and behead them, film it and put it online. For every child they cut in half … we cut one of their children in half. An eye for an eye.”

When the comments were reported, Facebook said that they did not breach the organisation’s guidelines.

One of Germany’s most famous landmarks, Cologne Cathedral, will be plunged into darkness on Monday evening in protest at a march by a growing grass-roots anti-Muslim movement through the western German city, cathedral authorities said.

The rise of the group, Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West (PEGIDA), has shaken Germany’s political establishment, prompting Chancellor Angela Merkel to say in her New Year address that its leaders were racists full of hatred and citizens should beware being used.

PEGIDA’s last weekly rally in the eastern city of Dresden attracted some 17,000 people, and the movement plans further marches in other cities, including through the center of Cologne on Monday night with a rally by the cathedral.

“PEGIDA is made up of an astonishingly broad mix of people, ranging from those in the middle of society to racists and the extreme right-wing,” Cathedral Dean Norbert Feldhoff told Reuters.

“By switching off the floodlighting we want to make those on the march stop and think. It is a challenge: consider who you are marching alongside.”

One German in eight would join an anti-Muslim march if a rapidly-growing protest movement organized one in their home towns, according to an opinion poll published on Thursday.

The survey highlighted growing support in Germany, as in other European Union countries including Britain and Sweden, for parties and movements tapping into voter fears that mainstream politicians are too soft on immigration.

Some members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc worry that they risk losing support to the euro-sceptic Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which has shifted its focus to immigration and includes many who also back the PEGIDA protest movement – Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West.

PEGIDA is holding weekly rallies in the eastern city of Dresden, and attracted more than 17,000 people to a Dec. 22 rally. A few small marches have taken place in other towns, and it plans to stage further rallies in other German cities.

In her New Year address, Merkel urged Germans to turn their backs on PEGIDA’s leaders, calling them racists full of hatred, and said Europe’s biggest economy must welcome people fleeing conflict and war.

A poll of 1,006 people by Forsa for Germany’s Stern magazine found 13 percent would attend an anti-Muslim march nearby. It also found 29 percent of people believed that Islam was having such an influence on life in Germany that the marches were justified.

Swedish police launched a manhunt Thursday after the third arson attack against a mosque in a week, amid growing tensions over the rise of a far right anti-immigration movement.

“People saw a man throwing something burning at the building,” police in Uppsala said in a statement, adding that the mosque in eastern Sweden did not catch fire and that the suspect had left behind “a text on the door expressing contempt for religion.”

A police spokesman told Swedish news agency TT that the burning object was a Molotov cocktail and that no one was in the building at the time. Sweden’s Islamic Association posted a photograph online of the main door of the mosque, which was emblazoned with the slogan “Go home Muslim shit”.

The police were alerted by passers-by, who reportedly witnessed the attack at around 0430 GMT. “The crime has been classed as attempted arson, vandalism and incitement to hatred,” the police said, appealing for witnesses to come forward.

Thursday’s attack in Sweden’s fourth-largest city came just three days after a late-night blaze at a mosque in Esloev in the south, which police suspect was also arson.

On Christmas Day, five people were injured when a petrol bomb was thrown through the window of a mosque in Eskilstuna, east of the capital Stockholm.

Sweden’s leftist Prime Minister Stefan Loefven led condemnation of the latest attack. “The most important thing now is that everyone distances themselves from this,” he told TT. “In Sweden no one should have to be afraid when they practice their religion,” he added, saying the government would increase funding for securing places of worship.

According to the anti-racism magazine Expo, there have been at least a dozen confirmed attacks on mosques in Sweden in the last year and a far larger number are believed to have gone unreported.

“People are afraid, they fear for their safety,” Mohammad Kharraki a spokesman for Sweden’s Islamic Association told AFP. “We’ve seen through history that people use violence as a way of polarising society against minorities.”

Angela Merkel urged Germans yesterday to reject a growing anti-Islam protest movement, warning that its leaders had “hatred in their hearts”.

The chancellor showed the deep concern among Berlin’s political establishment at the weekly marches through Dresden organised by Pegida (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West). The movement is spreading to other German cities.

Her strongly worded address, broadcast on national television last night, criticised Russia for its actions in Ukraine and called for Germans to welcome refugees from the war in Syria.

The Pegida movement in the eastern city of Dresden began in October with a few hundred demonstrators, but 17,000 people turned out on ten days ago for the latest Monday night march. It has adopted a slogan used before the fall of the Iron Curtain against the repressive communist regime of East Germany.

“Today many people are again shouting on Mondays, ‘We are the people’. But in fact they mean, You do not belong – because of the colour of your skin or your religion,” Mrs Merkel said in her message. “So I say to everyone who goes to such demonstrations: do not follow those who are appealing to you. Because too often there is prejudice, coldness, even hatred in their hearts.”

On the 31 December-2 January 2015, Luton Islamic Centre are organising a conference entitled “Return of Khilafah and Jihaad, the correct understanding”. The purpose of this conference is to clarify to the Muslim community, the deviated beliefs of ISIS, Al-Qaida, and their followers. From the supporters of ISIS are the UK based group Al-Muhajaroon.

Luton Islamic Centre has been in the forefront of warning against violent extremism and its advocates. We have produced and distributed across the UK, tens of thousands of anti-extremism leaflets, including 50,000 leaflets entitled: “Al Muhajaroon, the extremist cult exposed”. We have also funded the publication of several books written to refute the ideology of Al Qaida. (pdf link: http://www.calltoislam.com/pdf/Al-Muhaajiroon%20-%20The%20Extremist%20Cult%20Exposed.pdf)